May 2014

May 31, 2014

Megalomania – “An excessive enjoyment in having power over other people and a craving for more of it.” “Delusions of great power and importance.”

A healthy ego is one thing. But there is a classic joke that speaks to the egomania of some, a variation of which may go something like this. Perry Christie and God are out for a walk, with Christie hailing onlookers. One of the onlookers hails back and asks, “Who’s that fellow walking with Christie?”

This would be funny if it did not speak to a certain troubling mindset at the heart of government, with the prime minister narcissistically seemingly unable to accept responsibility for his failures or to internalize certain criticisms and make the necessary changes.

He is perpetually passing the buck as if his failures are usually the fault of others. He basically blamed the failed mortgage relief programs on officials in the Ministry of Finance. Never mind that he is the Minister of Finance. He threw his officials under the bus for this spectacular failure.

May 23, 2014

Following questions raised by FNM Deputy Leader Loretta Butler Turner on the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) National Security Minister Dr. B. J. Nottage personalized the issue, angrily suggesting that the queries constitute an attack on his character. Mrs. Butler Turner did not personalize her concerns, never mentioning Dr. Nottage by name in her rally remarks.

Dr. Nottage got it wrong. The issue is not about his character per se. It is about the rule of law. It is also about his poor exercise of authority and that of the government who share a collective failure and responsibility for not providing a legal basis for the NIA.

The FNM’s Deputy Leader raised consequential legal, policy and privacy questions, little of which Dr. Nottage addressed. This columnist has regard for the Minister and wished that he would have answered the substantive issues raised.

Perhaps he was defensive, embarrassed, because he realized his blunder. Whether he appreciates the magnitude of the blunder is another question. His reaction is part of a troubling pattern with the administration.

May 13, 2014

TREASURE CAY, Abaco — During a visit to the site of Abaco’s first loyalist settlement last week, Antiquities Corporation chief Dr Keith Tinker and senior archaeologist Dr Michael Pateman retrieved cultural remains for analysis and talked about organising an archaeological survey this summer.

I wrote a column on Carleton following a personal visit earlier this year, and was able to accompany Antiquities, Monuments & Museums Corporation representatives to the site last week for a brief walkabout. Also present were Tim Blakely of the Treasure Sands Club, which now owns the property; and Matt Claridge of the Abaco Defenders, a public interest group.

Remains of a loyalist-era settlement lie scattered over the landscape just off Treasure Cay Drive, the road that connects to the Abaco highway between the public beach and the adjacent creek. Last week, we collected brick and pottery fragments, bottle glass, and a heavily corroded iron object that looked like a ship's cleat.

And this week, Tinker confirmed that "there is sufficient evidence for the area to be considered a significant heritage site," and called for construction to cease pending further investigation.

"I will be writing a report for the Office of the Prime Minister stating this," he told me. "We also want signage to be installed identifying the area as a heritage site. The evidence is there and the site needs to be researched.”

In the 1980s, Florida archaeologist Robert Carr, historians Steve Dodge and Sandra Riley, civic leader Alton Lowe and others explored the area after researching land grants. They turned up loyalist-era artefacts, including pottery, bottle glass, oven bricks, military tunic buttons, musket balls, sewing implements, shells and animal bone remains. Most of these items are housed at the Albert Lowe museum on Green Turtle Cay.

A bronze plaque on the point just beyond the beach commemorates the 1983 bicentennial of the original loyalist landing on Abaco, but disturbance of this historic area by development has been ongoing for years, with little thought for either the environment or the original settlement.

The Treasure Sands property on which part of Carleton once stood was acquired by an English entrepreneur named Sir Alford Houstoun-Boswall some 30 years ago. In 2010 Sir Alford and his on-site partner Tim Blakely, who is an ex-Royal Navy bodybuilder and celebrity personal trainer, opened a high-end restaurant and clubhouse next to the public beach.

Last year they began clearing the scrub on the creek side of the road to prepare for a small cottage colony and spa that Blakely wants to name Carleton Village. But dredging was halted amid rising public concern over the environmental impact and the permitting process. Critics say the developers had planned to dredge a channel along the entire three-mile creek out to Treasure Cay Marina - a charge that Blakely brands as “scaremongering”.

The project was approved by the government last May, subject only to an environmental management plan vetted by the BEST Commission. There was no requirement for an environmental impact assessment, or for an archaeological survey.

This work contravenes the Planning & Subdivisions Act, which requires an EIA for any development on “sensitive lands”, like wetlands. The purpose is to "promote sustainable development in a healthy natural environment”, to "protect and conserve the natural and cultural heritage” of the Bahamas, and to provide for greater transparency in planning and permitting.

These objectives appear to have been ignored. But the proposed development is now going through a local town planning process. And the AMMC has confirmed it as a heritage site.

The Treasure Sands development is the latest effort to capitalise on Treasure Cay’s fabulous three-and-a-half-mile beach. The original second home/marina/golf course resort was launched in the 1950s by the late Leonard Thompson, but is now owned by German-Bahamian investor Ludwig Meister.

Local government officials and property owners began asking for information about the project. A spokesman for the Treasure Cay resort perhaps summed up these objections best: "Treasure Cay Ltd and the Treasure Cay homeowners still do not know exactly what Treasure Sands Club plans to build, except what we have read in the newspapers. Since this project is immediately adjacent to our resort, it would be helpful to know what is planned for the area and also get the right information released to the public.”

When loyalist emigres arrived here from New York in 1783 (after the American Revolution), Carleton Creek opened to the sea where the public beach huts stand today. The anchorage proved unsuitable for large vessels. And in any event, within a year of their arrival most of the settlers revolted and moved 20 miles to the south to found a new settlement at what they called Marsh’s Harbour. Within three years of this split, after several hurricanes, Carleton essentially ceased to exist.

However, the site should be as historically significant to Abaco as Jamestown, Virginia is to Americans. Jamestown was the first English settlement in North America. Over 200 colonists arrived there in 1607 but the settlement was abandoned in the 1690s, after which it was largely forgotten. In recent years, it has become a major archaeological and tourist site. Unfortunately, no effort has been made so far to capitalise on the Carleton settlement since the initial explorations back in the 1980s.

Steve Dodge was the first to identify the Carleton site in 1979, while researching records in Nassau for his book Abaco: History of an Out Island. Carr’s excavations a few years later indicated that the site was a loyalist settlement in the area originally known as Carleton. Survey records were provided to the government at the time, but interest waned and memories faded.

Of course, Carleton was not the first human settlement on Abaco. There were Lucayan Indians living here from about 900 years ago. But this area was settled by 250 whites and free blacks who sailed from New York in 1783. They named their settlement after Sir Guy Carleton, the general who supervised the British evacuation from America, and who carried out the Crown's promise of freedom to slaves who had joined the British during the war.

Since the 1980s no further archaeological work has been undertaken here. And the recent clearing of some three acres by Treasure Sands caused extensive damage according to Carr, who re-visited the area last November at the invitation of the Abaco Defenders.

The artefacts recovered from the site recently will be sent to the University of Florida for further expert analysis, and an archeological survey may be planned for later this year. it is not just a matter of looking for more bricks and artefacts but also locating house foundations and other features to reconstruct the settlement pattern. This is done by mapping the artifacts and features in place.

During my visit in January, Blakely said he was thinking of setting up a small museum as part of the Treasure Sands development, and would name a restaurant after the New York tavern where the loyalists signed up for their Abaco journey. "We are very open to cooperation with anyone who wishes to survey the site,” he told me at the time.

Clearly, the historical value of the Carleton site can only enhance the proposed development. However, minor construction work on the site continues.

By royal mandate the House of Assembly was established in the Bahama Islands in 1729 during the governorship of Woodes Rogers.

The institution was intended for white men of means. Slaves, their descendants and women did not legally qualify to sit in the House. White men of lesser means were unable to sit by virtue of their lower economic standing.

The institution evolved over the centuries, becoming the centre-piece of Bahamian democracy representing the relative advancement and equality of various segments of society.

During the second and third decades of the last century, R. M. Bailey and the politicians C. C. Sweeting and S. C. McPherson formed a political group, the Ballot Party. McPherson, like Stephen Dillette, Walton Young and others before him, were among the first blacks elected to the House.

In the 1940s Dr. C. R. Walker, Bert Cambridge and Milo Butler engaged the struggle for racial equality, championing the cause as members of the House.

Still, the largely undemocratic nature of the assembly involved not only those eligible for election. It also concerned those “qualified” to vote. As noted by Governor General Sir Arthur Foulkes in an independence address last year:

“One had to be male to register to vote. One had to own or rent property of a certain value. One male could vote in every constituency in which he owned or rented property. ... A lawyer could cast a vote for each of the companies registered at his office.”

The gross inequality of the system was overwhelmingly directed against blacks and women.

May 07, 2014

It’s difficult for a layman like me to figure out how this struggling $8 billion economy can withstand all that is coming down the pike - without a substantive improvement in governance and political collaboration, which doesn’t appear to be in the cards.

It looks like a perfect storm of economic and fiscal challenges is descending on our heads - due mostly to the long-term avoidance of hard choices by one administration after the other in the interest of political expediency.

As we slowly recover from the great recession, our battered little economy faces significant obstacles. And those who have the responsibility to address these issues don't want to talk about them. Instead, we are fed a daily diet of childish, and often vicious, political propaganda.

What am I talking about? Well, let’s start with the issue of the day - taxes. And not just taxes, but wholesale tax increases, including value added and/or payroll tax, higher National Insurance payments, higher property taxes, higher business licence fees, a proposed 5.3 per cent National Health insurance payment, and who knows what else.

In fact, the IMF prescription for the Bahamas to be able to maintain its currency peg with the US dollar is to spur tourism growth (our main export) while “containing demand through fiscal consolidation” - meaning more taxes to soak up liquidity and curb imports.